A little-known Sacramento homeless board is in a big power fight. Why? | Opinion
A power struggle is intensifying over a homeless oversight board that controls tens of millions of dollars annually — and few Sacramentans even know it exists.
Flying under the civic radar for literally decades, this board guides what is known as the Sacramento City and County Continuum of Care (CoC). The CoC board has long been predominantly led by private citizens, but in recent weeks, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is proposing to put elected officials in the majority.
But can they?
The supervisors appear to hold no legal authority to force changes to this board. The CoC helps oversee key actions by a non-profit organization, Sacramento Steps Forward, which must follow federal oversight requirements specifying this stakeholder board.
The county is looking to impose its will by finding allies in government — most notably the Sacramento City Council — and by these citizen leaders acquiescing to losing their majority power.
The CoC Board “is a non-elected body that is making allocations for the county,” Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez said at the board’s Dec. 9 meeting. “That should be alarming to us.”
Why an old board is getting a new look
The fight over the Continuum of Care is fast emerging as an important test case of homeless governance.
Homelessness is by far the top issue for these elected officials in Sacramento County because of the ongoing severity of the crisis and the growing frustration from everyday citizens.
To make any progress in managing homelessness will require better collaboration among governments and the non-profit organizations on the front lines of delivering and managing key homeless activities. Sacramento Steps Forward, for example, is in charge of estimating how many homeless people live in the county and managing the one database that multiple agencies rely upon to track each homeless individual and their service needs.
But power struggles tend to be messy. And now we have one smack-dab in the middle of Sacramento County’s homeless apparatus.
At least Sacramento County isn’t alone. Counties everywhere are wrestling with the same question of who should distribute the state and federal homeless dollars that reach their communities. Locally, the CoC manages roughly 10% of the outside funds that reach Sacramento County.
Why? “The composition of CoC’s is a matter of federal law,” said Graham Knaus, the chief executive officer of the California State Association of Counties. “There has been a consolidation of federal funding that now flows only through CoC’s ... In some cases, you have the CoC as a non-governmental entity overseeing, whether or not government gets funding.”
Blame the federal government
This all started with the best of federal intentions in the 1990s, when the nation’s homeless problems were a fraction of today. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development required local non-profits receiving funds for homeless services to stand up these oversight boards. In Sacramento, for example, the current chair of CoC, Joseph Smith, is a survivor of homelessness.
In 2009, Congress expanded the role of these CoC’s to be the middle man for handling the local distribution of some federal homeless dollars. Now, CoC’s can distribute state homeless dollars as well.
The CoC governance structure inside Sacramento Steps Forward is mind-numbing in its complexity: Underneath this one board is no less than 10 committees. For mere mortals, tracking how homelessness is managed inside Sacramento Steps Forward — much less the county overall — is nearly impossible.
It has only been in recent years, as the flow of state and federal dollars to tackle this problem has begun to decrease and calls to manage homelessness better have increased, that elected officials like county supervisors began taking a keen interest in the CoCs.
As one example of its duties, the Sacramento CoC last year received more than $40 million in federal funds for local homeless efforts. Much of it went to help operate more than 1,400 units of permanent housing for formerly homeless Sacramentans. Making a bad situation even worse is how the Trump administration is threatening to cut off this funding. Our president is laying the groundwork to send some of the county’s most vulnerable residents back on the streets.
It’s no wonder why supervisors want the buck to stop with them and outside dollars to flow through them. On Dec. 9, the supervisors passed a motion calling for the CoC to be led by a majority of county and city representatives.
“The people we represent … aren’t being served by what’s happening,” Supervisor Pat Hume said at the December meeting.
The CoC board last Dec. 10 discussed its governance future and took no vote that received a majority of support, according to Lisa Bates, Sacramento Steps Forward’s chief executive officer.
Where is the Sacramento City Council?
The Sacramento City Council is expected to take up the issue in January.
“Stay tuned,” Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said in a recent interview, not signaling his view on this governance matter. “We’re going to get an opportunity to look at some of this.”
For all the talk from this city council over the years on how it wants a stronger partnership with the county on homelessness, it has no united, official and substantive proposals on how to achieve that.
It is the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors that has emerged as the clear driver of change on homeless governance and oversight, from this CoC proposal to its more aggressive oversight of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency while its SHRA partner, the city, is basically asleep.
Any change in governance — particularly one advanced by a county with little authority on the matter — will require both diplomacy and patience. What has existed for decades isn’t about to dramatically change in a matter of weeks. A food fight among the non-profit leadership and our elected leaders over homelessness is the last thing that we need.
This story was originally published January 5, 2026 at 5:00 AM.